The Portable Henry James (Penguin Classics Series)

by Henry James, John Auchard (Editor)

Overview

Henry James wrote with an imperial elegance of style, whether his subjects were American innocents or European sophisticates, incandescent women or their vigorous suitors. His omniscient eye took in the surfaces of cities, the nuances of speech, dress, and manner, and, above all, the microscopic interactions, hesitancies, betrayals, and self-betrayals that are the true substance of relationships. The entirely new Portable Henry James provides an unparalleled range of this great body of work: seven major tales, including Daisy Miller, The Turn of the Screw, "The Beast in the Jungle," and "The Jolly Corner"; a sampling of revisions James made to some of his most famous work; travel writing; literary criticism; correspondences; autobiography; descriptions of the major novels; and parodies by famous contemporaries, including T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, and Graham Greene.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780142437674
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/30/2003
Series:	Penguin Classics Series
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	672
Product dimensions:	5.13(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Henry James (1843-1916), born in New York City, was the son of noted religious philosopher Henry James, Sr., and brother of eminent psychologist and philosopher William James. He spent his early life in America and studied in Geneva, London and Paris during his adolescence to gain the worldly experience so prized by his father. He lived in Newport, went briefly to Harvard Law School, and in 1864 began to contribute both criticism and tales to magazines.

In 1869, and then in 1872-74, he paid visits to Europe and began his first novel, Roderick Hudson. Late in 1875 he settled in Paris, where he met Turgenev, Flaubert, and Zola, and wrote The American (1877). In December 1876 he moved to London, where two years later he achieved international fame with Daisy Miller. Other famous works include Washington Square (1880), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Princess Casamassima (1886), The Aspern Papers (1888), The Turn of the Screw (1898), and three large novels of the new century, The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl (1904). In 1905 he revisited the United States and wrote The American Scene (1907).

During his career he also wrote many works of criticism and travel. Although old and ailing, he threw himself into war work in 1914, and in 1915, a few months before his death, he became a British subject. In 1916 King George V conferred the Order of Merit on him. He died in London in February 1916.

John Auchard is a professor of English at the University of Maryland at College Park, and the editor of The Portable Henry James.

Date of Birth:

April 15, 1843

Date of Death:

February 28, 1916

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Place of Death:

London, England

Education:

Attended school in France and Switzerland; Harvard Law School, 1862-63

Table of Contents

The Portable Henry JamesIntroduction
Chronology
Acknowledgments

I. Fiction

Daisy Miller: A Study
"Brooksmith"
"The Real Thing"
"The Middle Years"

The Turn of the Screw
"The Beast in the Jungle
"The Jolly Corner"

II. Revisions

Daisy Miller: 1879 and 1909

The Portrait of a Lady: 1881 and 1908

III. Travel

From English Hours
"London at Midsummer"

From Italian Hours
"Two Old Houses and Three Young Women"
"The Saint's Afternoon and Others"

From The American Scene
"The Bowery and Thereabouts"

from "Boston"
"France"

IV. Criticism

On Whitman
"brute sublimity"

On Baudelaire
"This is not Evil...it is simply the nasty!"

From Hawthorne
"No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church"

On Emerson
"salt is wanting"

"The Art of Fiction"
"the chamber of consciousness"
"Try to be one...on whom nothing is lost!"

From "the Question of Our Speech"
"Our national use of the vocal sound, in men and women alike, is slovenly"

From "The Lesson of Balzac"
"plated and burnished and bright"

On Shakespeare
the "absolute value of Style"

From the Preface to Roderick Hudson
"Really, universally, relations stop nowhere"

From the Preface to The Portrait of a Lady
"The house of fiction has in short not one window, but a million"

From the Preface to The Tragic Muse
"large loose baggy monsters"

V. Autobiography

The peaches d'antan
from A Small Boy and Others

The dancing teacher Madame Dubreil from A Small Boy and Others

A daguerreotype taken by Mathew Brady from A Small Boy and Others

The Galerie d'Apollon from A Small Boy and Others

An obscure hurt from Notes of a Son and Brother

The death of Minnie Temple from Notes of a Son and Brother

At the grave of Alice James from The Complete Notebooks

VI. Correspondence

A thirteen-year-old in Paris writes to a young friend
To Edgar Van Winkle; 1856

On the Grand Tour
To William James; October 30, 1869

Henry James, expatriate
To the James family; November 1, 1875

The literary scene in Paris
To William Dean Howells; May 28, 1876

Growing fame
To Miss Abbey Alger; November 21, 1881

The friendship with Robert Louis Stevenson
To Robert Louis Stevenson; July 31, 1888

The death of Alice James
To William James; March 8, 1892

The friendship with Hendrik C. Andersen
To Hendrik C. Andersen; February 9, 1902
To Hendrik C. Andersen; February 28, 1902

The death of William James
To Thomas Sergeant Perry; September 2, 1910
To H. G. Wells; September 11, 1910

The publication of Boon, and the break with H. G. Wells
To H. G. Wells; July 6, 1915
To H. G. Wells; July 10, 1915

VII. Definition and Description

An American encounters some aristocrats from The American

An ambitious young Frenchwoman from The American

Sarah Bernhardt, the muse of the newspaper from "The Comedie Francaise in London"

An American education from The Portrait of a Lady

An American is corrected on what constitutes "the self"
from The Portrait of a Lady

An absolutely unmarried woman from The Bostonians

Philistine decor from The Spils of Poynton

The really rich from The Wings of the Dove

New York identity from The Wings of the Dove

A Venetian majordomo from The Wings of the Dove

Like a scene from a Maeterlinck play from The Wings of the Dove

A private thought from the Wings of the Dove

The seduction of Europe from the Ambassadors

A femme du monde from The Ambassadors

An intimate recollection of a beautiful woman from The Golden Bowl

Colossal immodesty from The American Scene

The individual Jew from The American Scene

New York City Hall from The American Scene

The absence of penetralia from The American Scene

New York Power from The American Scene

American teeth from The American Scene

A young priest apart from the Roman carnival from Italian Hours

VIII. Names

IX. Parody

Frank Moore Colby from "In Darkest James"

Max Beerbohm
" 'The Mote in the Middle Distance,' by H*nry J*mes"

X. Legacy

W.H. Auden
"At the Grave of Henry James"

Joseph Conrad from "Henry James: An Appreciation"

T.S. Eliot from "In Memory"

Graham Greene from "Henry James: The Private Universe"

Ezra Pound from "Henry James"

Edith Wharton from A Backward Glance

Virginia Woolf from "Review of The Letters of Henry James"

Suggestions for Further Reading

Selected Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

Graham Greene

He is as solitary in the history of the novel as Shakespeare in the history of poetry.